Tent
by GrapeLeaf
Summary: Cid has joined the party and the group has just fled from Rocket Town. They find themselves on the shore of Wutai.


"Tent"  
  
Aeris pushed the goggles from her eyes up into her hair. Her overlong bangs drooped down over them ridiculously. "Sit down and shut up!" she barked. "Goddamnit, don't make me tell you again! Make me some goddamned tea!" She giggled and glanced at Cid for his reaction.  
  
He looked unsure, then broke down and smiled. "Gimme those things," he said with a laugh.  
  
Aeris flopped onto her back and giggled as she removed Cid's goggles from her hair. The hurricaine lamp in the middle of the tent made her shadow fly across the walls. "Come and get them," she said, draping her arm out languidly over her head.  
  
Cid had to do some stretching and reaching as he leaned over Nanaki to take his goggles back from Aeris. He snatched them with good natured ferocity from her graceful hand, then fitted them back over his head before pushing them into his own hair.  
  
"Come on, Aeris," Cloud said softly, "there's not enough room for this."  
  
Aeris sat up and tucked her knees to her chest. She looked coyly contrite. "Sorry, Cloud."  
  
Only no one else saw the coyness, and Cloud felt like a bully. He smiled at her to take the edge off what he had said.  
  
In the moment of quiet, Cloud could hear the sounds of the water off the coast of southern Wutai slapping up against the Tiny Bronco outside. They had managed to get the plane to the coast after their escape from Rocket Town, but hadn't wanted to risk putting it into deep water. They had hugged the coastline all the way.  
  
Tifa looked from Cloud to Aeris then back to Cloud with a mixture of curiosity and what looked like sadness. Her wet hair was draped over one shoulder. "These tents are getting bigger and bigger," she said.  
  
"Yes, but," Aeris said. Everyone looked at her expectantly. She shrugged. "But I think this is everybody. I mean to say, I don't think there will be any more people in our group."  
  
Cloud looked around at the cramped party.  
  
Vincent, for such a tall man, didn't take up much room. He sat in the corner of the tent with his long legs crossed, cleaning his gun with his right hand. He glanced up too at Aeris's words and looked around, vaguely surprised and in agreement. He nodded at Cloud.  
  
Barret sat to Vincent's left, and he did take up a lot of room, though he tried not to. "I hope so," he said.  
  
Nanaki was curled up with his tail over his nose, because the night was cold. Yuffie was next to him in the middle of the tent, and for such a tiny girl, she also took up a lot of room, or at least her weapon did.  
  
Tifa was behind them, next to Barret. She had just bathed in the cold water on the beach, and was shivering with a blanket around her. "I hope so, too,"she said. "I don't think they make bigger tents than this."  
  
"Hey Catbot," Cid called to Cait Sith, who sat atop his stuffed Mog close to the door. "You really need that goddamn huge Mog all the time?"  
  
The robot cat jumped with a metallic click. Cloud was next to him, his back to the zipped down door, and was close enough to hear it. "Yeah!" it said in its tin cup voice. "I need it for lots of things! Connected programs and everything."  
  
"It's cute," Aeris said.  
  
The robot smiled. That never failed to amaze Cloud. He knew that artificial intelligence was running the thing, but it sometimes seemed to have more than just intelligence. It occasionally had opinions and, as much as he hated to admit it, sometimes those opinions seemed close to impassioned. He had asked Cait Sith once who had programmed him, and somehow not gotten an answer. Something had happened before Cait Sith had been able to tell him. A battle, maybe? He couldn't remember, which was nothing new for Cloud.  
  
"Hey Cait, who..." he began.  
  
"We ain't had a chance to get to know one another yet," Barret said. "And I don't trust all of you yet. I wonder why that is. Lemme see. What's wrong with this picture?" He pointed to Cid. "ShinRa," he said. Then he pointed to Vincent and Cloud. "ShinRa and ShinRa."  
  
Cait Sith jumped again with that strange metal click.  
  
"Come on, man," Cid said. "I want nothing more to do with those betrayin' dicks, and I think you know it."  
  
Cloud tried not to scowl. He hated when Barret reminded him of his time in ShinRa, (inasmuch as anything could remind him; Cloud only remembered the fact that he had been involved with them, but could recall very little of what he had actually done.)  
  
*Maybe you're the one betraying them, and you just don't remember it,* he thought. The idea was so jarring that he jumped too, and it was Cait Sith's turn to look at him with the sensors behind its plastic eyes.  
  
Everyone was jumpy.  
  
"Well, let me put it to you this way," Vincent said. "The people of ShinRa took away the woman I loved, filled me with genetically altering cells and Mako, cut me into pieces and locked me in a box in a basement." He turned to Barret and looked him in the eyes. "What do you think?"  
  
Barret stared back with ice in his eyes for a long moment. He let out the breath he was holding and let his shoulders drop. "Well, shit," he said. "I guess it's nice to have a fellow amputee around." He held his gun arm out to Vincent.  
  
Vincent smiled back with vague irony, made a fist with his claw, and lightly punched the front of Barret's gun with a dull *clank.*  
  
"Oh, cute," Cid said. "A metal appendage high five."  
  
"That was a low five, smartass," Barret said.  
  
Aeris giggled and nimbly baby crawled over Nanaki, to sit in front of Vincent. Nanaki followed her with his one eye.  
  
"Let me see," Aeris whispered, and took Vincent's claw into her hand. "Ooh, it's cold. Do you have feeling in it?"  
  
The ex Turk tensed when she touched him, but not in desire or awkwardness. Cloud suspected that Vincent hadn't been touched in a long time. "There are no touch receptors in it," he said. "I can make it move, so it receives electrical impulses from my brain, but not from the outside world." He pulled his arm back from Aeris's light grip. "It's the work of Hojo, and he wasn't going to bother making it perfect."  
  
Aeris flinched subtly at the mention of Hojo's name, then smiled again. She took Vincent's other hand. "This one's even colder," she said. She pressed his hand between her palms and rubbed it.  
  
Vincent smiled and gently pulled his hand away from her. "It's a cold night," he said.  
  
Cloud watched in hateful, thoroughly familiar jealousy. Vincent took his cape off at night, and the first time he had done so, Aeris had asked him why he hid such a handsome face and lovely form. He was thin, she'd said, but with nice broad shoulders. She'd said she'd expected him to have some sort of disfigurement - not that it would make him less handsome, of course.  
  
That meant that she had looked, and looked well. The worst part was that Cloud knew that Aeris wasn't coming on to Vincent; she was just being herself. And Cloud knew that Vincent knew this too, but it didn't stop him from hating the scene, or from saying what he said next.  
  
"Vincent, how old are you?"  
  
Vincent looked from Aeris to Cloud. He held Cloud's gaze for a fraction of a second before looking back to Aeris. "Too old," he said. He leaned his head back and sighed wearily. "Much, much too old."  
  
Aeris seemed to feel the depth of his sigh more than his words, and for a moment she looked honestly surprised. "How old?" she asked.  
  
Vincent looked thoughtful. "That's a good question. I'm not sure." He looked back at Cloud. "How old is Sephiroth?"  
  
The name jarred everyone in the tent into silence, as it always did.  
  
"Umm, well..." Cloud was aware that everyone in the tent was looking at him, as they did everytime a question about Sephiroth came up. He took a shaky breath. "It's hard for me to remember. When I was fifteen, Sephiroth was twenty five. That was six, going on seven years ago, because I'll be twenty two this summer."  
  
"I'll be twenty three next month," Aeris piped up.  
  
Her words hung in the air like a fading bell chime.  
  
"Sorry for interrupting," she said. "It's just that I forgot. Go on."  
  
"Anyway, so Sephiroth would be about thirty one or thirty two," Cloud said, and then thought about that for a moment. Since Sephiroth's return, he hadn't thought of his age. Giving Sephiroth an age was like giving him humanity; that he could be a certain amount of years old and still be as powerful as he was made him seem somehow more daunting.  
  
"Shit, that's how old I am," Cid muttered.  
  
"Damn!" Barret said. "That makes him younger than me!" He punched his huge fist on the tent floor.  
  
"God," Yuffie said. "That's pretty weird. I keep forgetting that he must have been a kid once."  
  
Vincent pressed his lips together and looked away from all of them, staring intently at the little plastic window across from him, over Aeris's head.  
  
"Age is just numbers," Nanaki said. "Remember, I'm just a teenager, and I'm forty eight. That's older than all of you."  
  
"No, I'm still older," Vincent said, breaking his reverie. "I was twenty seven when I was assigned to Hojo. Sephiroth was born a year or so after. If Sephiroth is thirty one or thirty two, that makes me sixty. Give or take a few years."  
  
Silence from the entire party. Tifa spoke up first: "No way."  
  
Aeris peered closely into Vincent's face, and he shrank back just a fraction. "You don't look like you're over twenty seven. How can that be?"  
  
He shrugged and avoided her eyes. "Genetic altering," he said. "And probably Mako. Look at Cloud. He'll probably look about twenty one for a long time to come."  
  
Aeris did look at Cloud, and she smiled. Cloud shivered with sudden and overwhelming emotion. Aeris had that awful way of making anyone she paid attention to feel special, not because of anything they had done, but rather because she had chosen to pay that attention for her own reasons. Cloud didn't care why it was. He felt glad to be seen as anything positive in her huge green eyes.  
  
It occurred to him that Sephiroth had made him (and other SOLDIERs) feel that same way, from the little bit that he could remember. He rarely remembered events, but he did remember feelings, and the feelings that stood out in his mind were the desperate need for Sephiroth's approval, and the understanding that everyone else felt the same way.  
  
Instead of crawling over to Cloud, Aeris made her way to Tifa and sat down next to her. She took a lock of Tifa's wet hair and twirled it between her fingers.  
  
"I wish I had dark brown hair like you," she said.  
  
Tifa looked nervously at Cloud, before turning her head to look at Aeris. "You have brown hair," she said. "It's beautiful."  
  
Cloud hated to see Tifa uncomfortable and awkward.  
  
"But not like yours. Yours is..."  
  
"Materia," Cloud said suddenly. "We should exchange and set up our Materia."  
  
"I'm keeping mine!" Yuffie said, so loudly that Cloud cringed.  
  
"Yuffie, if you're not going to come out and fight in a team tomorrow morning, then at least let someone borrow your support Materia."  
  
"Ask me for it tomorrow. I like to keep it with me while I sleep."  
  
Cloud wanted to argue that he was not going to feel like doing the Materia exchange at the crack of dawn before everyone packed up and moved on, but decided to keep quiet and let her have her way. Let someone else be difficult once in a while.  
  
"Cloud, you can have my Materia," Aeris said. "Unless you want me to come out with you tomorrow morning."  
  
Cloud had already decided to take Cid and Vincent as his fighters tomorrow, and let the others carry the supplies. He wanted them both to integrate themselves into the group and fight smaller enemies before moving on. He had an awful feeling that something big was around the corner. There was a system to the way the team fought enemies, and Cloud wanted their two newest members to get a feel for it, and fast.  
  
"I'll take it, thanks," he said.  
  
Aeris took all the Materia from her Prism Staff, reached over and handed it all to Cloud. "It's everything except the White. I'll let you distribute it. You're so good with Materia." She brushed her fingers over his as he took the orbs from her.  
  
"Thank you, Aeris," Cloud said, painfully aware of how pathetic he sounded. He cleared his throat. "Umm, Cid and Vincent. Will you two come out and cover everyone with me tomorrow as we travel?"  
  
"Cover everyone with you?" Cid asked. "Why don't you just say it like it is: Get our asses kicked while they schlep our supplies along!" Cid let out a guffaw.  
  
"You said it," Tifa said. She reached across Nanaki and high-fived Cid.  
  
"On the flip side, little sister," Cid said, and turned his hand upright behind his back. Tifa had to maneuver and balance on her knees to avoid falling on Nanaki is she reached for him. She managed, but her wet hair flopped onto Nanaki's fur.  
  
"Oops! Sorry!" she giggled. As she pulled away, one of the feathers Nanaki wore in his hair got tangled in Tifa's hair and she dragged it back with her.  
  
Nanaki snorted a small laugh. "You may as well keep it; it suits you," he said.  
  
Barret laughed his loud chuckle.  
  
Cloud watched all of this with familiar interest. Tifa had been so quiet and sad during the last few weeks, probably due to the stress of travelling and fighting, that he had begun to worry about her. It was a heavy burden that she was sharing with them, and it was heartening to see her acting like her old, earthy self again. He found that he was smiling at her. Tifa was warm. Tifa was real.  
  
She looked at him and smiled back as she sat back and toyed with the feather in her hair. Cloud kept smiling, and she looked at him questioningly.  
  
"Nothing," he mouthed without making a sound.  
  
"I wish I was one of you," Cait Sith said suddenly.  
  
The robot sounded wistful, and Cloud looked at it, amazed again. Sometimes its voice was the monotonous tin drone of a robot, but sometimes it spoke with the musical inflections of a human being, and this was one of those times.  
  
"Aww," Aeris cooed, "Cait Sith wants to be a real boy?"  
  
"No, that's not what I..." The robot stopped, jerked with another metal clink, and shook its head. "Yeah, I guess that's what I mean."  
  
*"I wish,"* Cloud repeated mentally. *It doesn't just respond, predict and plan. It wants.*  
  
Aeris seemed concerned not with the robot's disturbing humanity, but with what it had said. Suddenly serious, she crawled on her hands and knees over to Cait Sith and knelt in front of him, close to Cloud, too. She put her small hands on either side of the robot's face and looked into its sensors. "I know just what you mean," she whispered.  
  
Another startled *clink* from the robot. "You do?" it whispered back, and Cloud would have sworn to god almighty that he had heard a tremor in its voice.  
  
Aeris nodded slowly. "I know just what you mean." She leaned close to Cait Sith and whispered so low that only the robot and Cloud could hear her: "And I know exactly how you feel."  
  
The robot didn't move, but Cloud distinctly heard it draw in a breath when Aeris put her arms around the Mog and the robot and pressed her face against the top of the Mog's head.  
  
It had gasped. She had made the robot gasp. Cloud knew searingly that he was being very naive about something. Probably a great number of somethings. There was something about the robot that he was not getting, and more importantly, something that he was not getting about Aeris.  
  
Cloud watched in envy and confusion as she held onto the robot. Her face was turned to him. Her eyes were closed, but her face showed desperation beyond her years.  
  
Tifa cleared her throat. Everyone in the tent stopped staring at Aeris and the robot, and began shuffling around in their bags or pockets or anything else they could find.  
  
"My Materia, Cloud," Tifa said in nearly a whisper. She balanced on her knees again to hand Cloud the orbs of Materia. She didn't brush his fingers as Aeris had done, but instead looked into his eyes. She looked as confused as he was. Cloud shrugged helplessly.  
  
Aeris sighed as she let go of the robot and Mog. "Well!" she said, her voice bright once more. "I call the Mog as my pillow!" She fluffed the huge stuffed toy and leaned back against it, smiling.  
  
"I call the Materia as mine!" Yuffie shouted.  
  
"Uhh, not even," Cloud said.  
  
"Why not put it in a bag and leave it until the morning?" Nanaki said. "It's a little late to divide it up now." He took the Plus Barrette in his teeth and pulled the Materia free with his long claw. "You might need my Fire. It's almost mastered." He dumped the orbs into the growing pile of Materia in front of Cloud.  
  
"Damn," Cid said. "How long have you had it?"  
  
"Not long, but we've all been using our Materia a lot."  
  
"You could have mine," Barret said, emptying the slots in his gun arm. "Just return Ramuh in better condition than I left him." He handed it to Cid, who put it in front of Cloud.  
  
Cait Sith wordlessly dropped his in the pile, too.  
  
Yuffie watched them all and rolled her eyes.  
  
"Well, this is good enough for tomorrow," Cloud said. He scratched the top of his head as he looked it over. "We have a lot more than I thought. The three of us aren't going to be able to carry it all, so you all can have some of it back."  
  
"But not now," Vincent said. "Tomorrow morning." He stifled a yawn with the back of his claw.  
  
"It is late," Cid said. He stretched as much as their limited space would allow. "And it's been a long goddamn day. I wonder if the Tiny Bronco's going to be okay out there on the beach."  
  
"We take turns looking out," Cloud said. "We used to go in twos, but now we're nine. So you guys can do parties of two and I'll go alone for some extra hours. I don't sleep much."  
  
"I want to go at dawn," Yuffie said.  
  
"Whatever everyone wants," Cloud answered. "I don't mind." He stared tiredly at his sword, which was propped up next to him. The hurricaine lamp lit it dully, but the scratches and nicks in the metal glinted and winked whenever someone moved.  
  
"Well," Cid suggested, "I'll do first shift with Vincent, since we have to get up early."  
  
"That makes sense," Vincent said. He stood up, stepped over Nanaki and Yuffie, and crouch-walked to the door. He unzipped the tent and stepped out into the night air.  
  
"Not real talkative, is he?" Cid asked.  
  
"We ain't got to know him too well yet," Barret said. "All we've been doing since we met him is fighting enemies and sleeping and eating. Damn, this is the first night we all got to sit down and look at each other's faces."  
  
"Well, you all seem okay to me, I guess," Cid said as he got up and made his way to the door. "If you're gonna kill me and steal my poor busted plane, I guess you'll do it whether I'm inside or out, right?"  
  
"We all have to learn to trust each other," Aeris said softly. Her eyes were closed, but she opened them and looked around the tent, then up at Cait Sith. "We're all trying to save the Planet. That's the most important thing."  
  
She closed her eyes again and seemed to fall asleep.  
  
Cloud watched her helplessly, feeling stupid and pathetic, but unable to look away.  
  
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------  
  
Reeve sat at his desk in the ShinRa building and watched the monitor in rapt silence. The lights in his office were out, and he was lit only by the glow of the small screen that showed him whatever Cait Sith saw with its sensors.  
  
He'd meant what he'd said through Cait Sith.  
  
Strife obviously knew there was something more than artificial intelligence in the robot, and the Ancient definitely knew.  
  
"Aeris," he whispered. He didn't want to call her "the Ancient," as if she had no other name, just a title.  
  
Aeris knew. Reeve was uncertain how much she knew, but it was only a matter of time before she figured out the rest. He hoped that she'd do it soon.  
  
He clicked the remote and let Cait Sith go on automatic.  
  
"Reeve."  
  
He nearly fell out of his chair. Tseng was silhouetted in the doorway. "Uh, come in," Reeve said.  
  
Tseng walked soundlessly into Reeve's office. "Anything new?" he asked.  
  
"No," Reeve answered in what he hoped was not a choked voice. "No, they, uhh... The pilot is with them and they're just getting ready for bed."  
  
"Where are they?"  
  
"Somewhere close to Wutai, on a beach." Reeve knew that they were nowhere near Wutai town, but they were on the continent. "I'm not sure if it's north or south. Just a beach."  
  
Tseng crossed behind him and looked at the monitor. Just then, all it was showing was the wall of a tent. "Make it look around without moving too much."  
  
Reeve moved the sensors around, glancing quickly over the sleeping bodies and carefully avoiding the pile of Materia. He didn't want anyone in ShinRa to know how much Materia Avalanche had. They could hear the soft breathing and occasional snoring of the people in the tent.  
  
"Wait, go back," Tseng hissed. "Go down."  
  
Reeve moved the sensors down until the light brown of Aeris's hair filled the screen.  
  
"Aeris," Tseng breathed.  
  
To their surprise, the girl turned her head up and looked right into the sensors, her green eyes nearly filling the screen that Reeve and Tseng were watching. They both drew back, unconsciously guilty.  
  
"Do you have the sound on?" Tseng whispered in Reeve's ear.  
  
"No. No, we can hear them, but they can't hear us right now. She can't hear a thing."  
  
"Cait?" Aeris whispered. "Did you call me?"  
  
"Turn it on. Tell her no," Tseng ordered. "Or tell her yes. Or something."  
  
With a shaking hand, Reeve hit the "send voice" button and took a steadying breath.  
  
"I got lonely," he said into the receiver.  
  
Aeris's eyes flicked down coyly and she adjusted herself so she could back up a bit. She looked up at Cait Sith, smiling. "A lonely robot?" she whispered. "That's different."  
  
Reeve considered saying any number of stupid things, reconsidered, and finally said, "Yeah, I guess it is."  
  
The green eyes blinked and turned serious. "Well, Cait Sith," she said staring up into the sensors again, seemingly right at Reeve and Tseng, "I completely understand." Then she turned around again and leaned back against the Mog.  
  
Reeve and Tseng stared into the monitor breathlessly.  
  
"Does she know?" Reeve asked, drawing his hand across his face tiredly.  
  
"I don't know." Tseng was still staring at the screen where Aeris's face had been, with her green eyes looking into them, searching and partly understanding. Tseng made a fist on Reeve's desk, then turned away and strode over to the window. Reeve could see him reflected in the monitor as he stared out over the ruined land. "Oh Christ," Reeve heard him murmur. "Aeris."  
  
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End file.
